El cuco de cristal – Javier Castillo

When first-year resident Cora Merlo suffers a sudden heart attack in New York, her only chance of survival is an urgent transplant. As she slowly recovers, a mysterious woman appears in her hospital room with a disturbing but irresistible offer: travel to the small town of Steelville and learn who her heart really belonged to – her son Charles, the donor whose death made Cora’s second life possible. 

In Steelville, Cora enters a house where grief, guilt and unspoken truths have been accumulating for decades. The family’s past is full of fractures and contradictions, and every conversation about Charles opens new questions instead of answers. At the same time, the town itself seems frozen in silence – and the very day Cora arrives, a baby disappears from a public park, echoing an old tragedy that nobody wants to discuss. 

As Cora connects the donor’s past with her own present, she discovers that her new heart carries more than memories – it beats at the centre of a long-running mystery that binds together Steelville’s inhabitants, a series of buried crimes and a network of carefully guarded lies.

El cuco de cristal is a tense psychological thriller about identity, second chances and how far people will go to protect the secrets that define them. Javier Castillo, one of Spain’s best-selling suspense authors, weaves a story full of twists, emotional stakes and constant unease, perfect for readers who enjoy dark small-town mysteries, medical intrigue and morally complex characters.